# Listing Event Types

This guide shows how to **list the existing event types** from EventSourcingDB using its HTTP API. You'll learn how to **retrieve all event types** that have been used so far.

## Listing All Event Types

To **retrieve the list of all known event types**, send an HTTP request using **`POST`** to the **`/api/v1/read-event-types`** endpoint:

```shell
curl \
  -i \
  -X POST \
  -H "authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>" \
  http://localhost:3000/api/v1/read-event-types
```

If everything worked as expected, the server will respond with **HTTP status code `200 OK`**:

```
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
```

The response body will then contain a list of all event types that have been used in stored events. If you've followed the steps in **[Writing Events](/learn/tutorials/first-steps-with-eventsourcingdb/writing-events)**, you should see the following event types:

```json
{
  "type": "eventType",
  "payload": {
    "eventType": "io.eventsourcingdb.library.book-acquired",
    "isPhantom": false
  }
}
{
  "type": "eventType",
  "payload": {
    "eventType": "io.eventsourcingdb.library.book-borrowed",
    "isPhantom": false
  }
}
```

In reality, the output will look slightly different – the event types are returned as compact **NDJSON**, with each event type occupying a single line.

> **Schemas Included**
>
> If you have previously **[registered a schema](/learn/tutorials/first-steps-with-eventsourcingdb/registering-event-schemas)** for an event type, the **`payload` will also contain the schema**.

### A Word on Phantom Event Types

You may have noticed that the response not only includes the event types themselves, but also indicates whether each event type is considered a **phantom**.

This raises the question: when is an event type considered a phantom?

- An event type is a phantom if EventSourcingDB knows already about this event type, although **no events of that type have been written yet** (e.g., because a JSON schema was registered for the given event type).
- An event type is *not* a phantom if **at least one event of that type exists**.

## Listing a Specific Event Type

In some cases, you may want to **retrieve detailed information about a specific event type**. To do so, send an HTTP request using **`POST`** to the **`/api/v1/read-event-type`** endpoint and include the event type you are interested in as JSON in the request body:

```shell
curl \
  -i \
  -X POST \
  -H "authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "eventType": "io.eventsourcingdb.library.book-acquired" }' \
  http://localhost:3000/api/v1/read-event-type
```

If everything worked as expected, the server will respond with **HTTP status code `200 OK`** and return a flat JSON object with all details about the event type:

```json
{
  "eventType": "io.eventsourcingdb.library.book-acquired",
  "isPhantom": true,
  "schema": {
    "...": "..."
  }
}
```